This year, FLUSH worked with UrbanEmerge and Science Practice colleagues to develop two resources for the humanitarian funder, Elrha.
Based on Elrha's resource page, the Innovation Opportunities in Solid Waste Disposal in Humanitarian Settings report explores how innovation may help address the challenge of improper solid waste disposal. We explored the problem of improper solid waste disposal in two settings – Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement, Uganda and Doolow Internally Displaced Person (IDP) Camp, Somalia. The report outlines the problems, causes, and impacts of poor solid waste disposal in these settings and five innovation opportunities that could contribute to improving the situation. For each of these five broad opportunities, we showed more specific examples of how innovators or innovation funders could leverage the opportunity.
The methodology helps identify potential opportunities for Innovation by exploring specific Problems that contribute to established Gaps in humanitarian response. It can help:
understand what problems contribute to wider gaps in humanitarian response.
investigate what is causing and contributing to these problems.
establish how these problems are currently being addressed.
identify opportunities where innovation could support a better response to the problems.
Check out the report and tool in our Resources and Publications section.
Also, check out this related blog post from our partners at UrbanEmerge.
Special thanks to Andrea Wong, Mansoor Ali, Lamax Ogwal, and Naji Makarem for being a part of the team developing these resources with us!